Why Grapevine Growth Plan Lacks Smarts

Tejon Ranch Co. and the Trust for Public Land have proposed that the 100,000-acre Tejon Ranch Preserve be established in the tri-county area around the Grapevine. The preserve will provide the company with the money and the mitigation to proceed with its plans to put 23,000 homes in this rural area. This will only make it easier for county planners and supervisors to approve plans that will ruin the local economy, burden taxpayers, lower groundwater and destroy priceless habitat.

The development will result in a population larger than that of Santa Monica. The jobs-to-housing ratio in northern L.A. County, already described as bad by the Southern California Assn. of Governments, will become even worse. Traffic on Interstate 5 will become more nightmarish.

Anyone familiar with Assembly Bill 857, enacted in 2002 and offering some guidance in state planning, will see that this development violates the letter and the spirit of the law. But L.A. and Kern counties will, undoubtedly, pay attention only to short-term property tax benefits and optimistic promises of job creation.

The only powerful allies that smart-growth proponents have in our area are the San Andreas and Garlock faults, which may, in their justified anger, produce another 8.0 earthquake as they did in 1857.

Jan de Leeuw

Cuddy Valley, Calif.